Terrorism being fed by extremist mindset

Extremism constitutes as big a threat to the existence of the state as terrorism which is its militant expression

While the government is still looking for a counter-terrorism strategy, it has totally neglected the expanding wave of extremism which remains the chief source of recruits for the terrorist networks. Extremists also provide the terrorists the services badly needed by them as hosts, informers and financiers. Extremism constitutes as big a threat to the existence of the state as terrorism which is its militant expression.

One counters extremist thinking in almost all social strata. The establishment encourages extremist organizations in pursuit of its short-sighted policies. Among them is Difa-e- Pakistan Council known for its jingoistic stand visa-a-vis India and hostility towards the West. The Council displays a posture of aggressive nationalism while claiming to be the defender of the state’s identity.

For decades the Islami Jamiat e Tulaba has been allowed to maintain a reign of terror in Punjab University, torturing students who belong to rival outfits and roughing up teachers who try to maintain discipline on the campus. It has banned music shows and other cultural activities through recourse to force after declaring them un-Islamic.

The media generally subscribes to the extremist narrative on the purpose behind the creation of Pakistan. Extremists try to control media content either through threats or by installing their protagonists inside media groups. The NGOs are among the foremost targets of the extremist groups who accuse them to be agents of the west, and the Jews. Women and minorities are the other.

The extremist thinking is nourished by both external and internal factors. The external factors include perceived acts of injustice by foreign countries like the US, Israel or India. The narrative of injustice done to the Muslim communities may not be altogether wrong but the demand from the government to stop them by force is a recipe for disaster. What Pakistan can realistically do is to seek the resolution of these grievances within the parameters of international norms.

The internal factors can however be brought under control through intervention by the government. Its performance in this respect however is zilch.

Madrassahs under the Salafi influence are a major breeding ground of extremism. A vast majority of these was set up in the years following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in late 1979. According to Amir Rana, an expert on religious militancy, Pakistan witnessed a mushrooming of the madrassahs from 570 in 1979 to more than 7,000 in 1989. In 2011, Muhammad Hanif Jalandhari, an official at Wafaq-ul-Madaras, puts the number of registered seminaries at 14,000. Many times more are functioning without registration. An official of the Education Department in Quetta told a leading national English daily recently that while around 2,500 madressahs are registered with the Balochistan government, the number of unregistered seminaries is around 10,000. “Most of these are located in the areas bordering Afghanistan.”

What kind of education do the Salafi controlled madrassahs provide?

This variety of madrassahs focuses on political Islam. The political Islam requires the implementation of the scriptures in the political, economic, administrative, judicial and socio-cultural spheres of the state. In fact, the creation of a ‘true’ Muslim state is one of the prime objectives of political Islam.

Unlike the traditional seminaries of the pre-1980 era which concentrated on religious texts, the seminaries set up with funds provided by the Arab governments preach radicalism and hatred against other religions and against non-Salafi sects. They nurture a mindset that considers that the holy book contains answers to all the questions. The mindset rejects innovation and modernity. The radical madrassahs promote a thinking which opposes peaceful dialogue with opponents and favours the use of force to resolve differences.

The Saudis undertook to finance the fighting in Afghanistan in the name of jihad. The madrassahs receiving Arab funds were to become the nurseries for the raising of jihadis. The tradition continues.

A US diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks estimates that $100 million a year was making its way from the Gulf Arab states to an extremist recruitment network in Pakistan’s Punjab province alone. According to the November 2008 dispatch by Bryan Hunt, the then principal officer at the US consulate in Lahore, Saudi Arabia was funding some of Pakistan’s hardline religious seminaries which churn out young men eager for “holy war”, posing a threat to the stability of the region.

“At these madrassas, children are denied contact with the outside world and taught sectarian extremism, hatred for non-Muslims, and anti-Western/anti-Pakistan government philosophy,” said the cable. “The initial success of establishing madrassas and mosques in these areas led to subsequent annual ‘donations’ to these same clerics, originating in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates,” the cable stated. Saudi funds led to multiplication of the Salafi madrassahs all over the country.

Education as well as boarding and lodging in madrassas being free, these continue to attract children and youth from poor families. But poverty is not the sole reason behind their appeal. Paucity of funds reserved in the budget for school education is equally responsible for the spread of the madrassas. In Balochistan over 10,000 settlements have no schools while the province has 2.3 million children out of school. A report in an English national daily published on Dec 22, 2013 quotes Sardar Raza Muhammad Bareech, the adviser on education to the provincial chief minister, “Can you believe that there’s a high school for girls in the heart of Quetta that has no functioning toilet?” The institution to which he refers has more than 2,500 students. In Mr Bareech’s view, “we need to recruit some 60,000 new teachers and open about 13,000 new schools” to meet the target of educating all of Balochistan’s children.

The government cannot ban the madrassas. Despite the harm they do, they also fulfill a social need. The most important step to arrest their spread is bigger allocation for education in budget. The army needs to realize that instead of being a strategic asset the madrassas are now raising potential fighters whose prime target is the army itself.

The curriculum taught at private and government educational institutions is no less responsible for the spread of extremist thinking.

The text books taught in common schools define national identity in terms of religion which necessitate the revision of history even if it leads to contradictions and falsifications. The same text book presents Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance while presenting Hindus and Jews as enemies against whom jihad has to be waged.

There is no place for plurality in the text books. Pakistanis are not supposed to possess separate religious or ethnic identities. We are one nation, have one religion and have Urdu as one language, the student is told.

Last year the Punjab government ordered a ban on teaching comparative religion which a private chain of schools had prescribed for its students. The Education Department ordered the seizure and elimination of all reading material related to the course, reminding many of the medieval burning of heretical books in Europe. “No one would be allowed to change the basic ideology of the education system of Pakistan and stern action would be initiated against the people behind such a conspiracy,” said provincial education minister observed.

The Punjab Education Department also issued orders to confiscate a science book of class six of the same school which the department said possessed obscene material provocative for youth.

For its part, the association of the private schools banned Malala’s autobiography from its libraries.

The extremist outlook has influenced large swathes of the educated population including journalists, lawyers, teachers, politicians and members of the judiciary. The state has two options. It can renounce extremism, take the path of moderation and emerge as a peaceful and prosperous member in the comity of nations. The other option is to let the forces of reaction have a field day. With extremists and terrorists as friends, the state won’t need any enemies to destroy it. It will implode within a few years.

The writer is a political analyst and a former academic.